


struggled just to stay inside the lines

by nonbinary_distortion



Series: wonderful [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Aftercare, Coming In Pants, Nonbinary Character, Other, Self-Bondage, Weird Biology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:08:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24569029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonbinary_distortion/pseuds/nonbinary_distortion
Summary: "You know what they say about flirting with monsters.""No, what do they say?" Gerry asked. He pressed a kiss to Michael's cheek. It felt heavy, and then lighter, like Michael was a piece of sandpaper that was trying very hard to think marshmallow thoughts.
Relationships: Gerard Keay/Michael Shelley, Gerard Keay/Michael | The Distortion
Series: wonderful [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1820119
Comments: 21
Kudos: 244





	struggled just to stay inside the lines

The hotel room wasn’t the worst Gerry had ever stayed in, not that he cared. It was on the third floor, and currently he was standing on the small balcony that overlooked the back alleyway, smoking and thinking. Down below, he watched an older man throw a bag of garbage into the dumpster. A few rats skittered out of the way of his footsteps, but the space was mostly devoid of supernatural energy. Mostly. He didn’t even turn his head when he heard the sound of a door open and close behind him.

“Cigarette?” Gerry asked of the entity that came to stand near him, almost hovering at his side.

That drew out a delighted laugh from Michael, its long hair falling over its face before Michael brushed it back out of the way with fingers that should have been too long to complete the task.

Gerry took another drag of his cigarette. He wondered if he dropped it just right, whether he could land it into one of the trash cans beneath him. Well, better not.

“This is becoming a regular thing with you,” he commented, as Michael threaded its fingers through the rail. Michael was showing up with more and more frequency, and Gerry hadn’t yet decided what he thought of that. He didn’t mind the company, exactly, but he thought maybe he should.

The problem was that he liked Michael. He liked the strange things Michael said, and he wasn’t sure what it said about him that he preferred it to talking to most people. Michael didn’t need a beginner’s course in Fears, or to be saved by him. As far as he could tell, Michael didn’t need anything from him.

“I only came to see where you’d run off to this time.”

“Not exactly running. Doing my job is more like it.”

“Oh, I know. The search for more of your books.”

“They aren’t _my_ books,” Gerry said, distastefully. He jabbed his cigarette butt into an ashtray that looked like it had never been cleaned. This wasn’t some romantic tourist city, and there was no one keeping up appearances.

Michael flicked its eyes over to him, watching him take out another cigarette and hold his lighter up to it. Its fingers were woven into the railing now, bent oddly to fit. 

Gerry pulled out his mobile and checked it again. He was waiting on a contact, and he couldn’t be sure when, or even if, they’d call him with the info.

“I like your flat better,” Michael said. Now its fingers from its other hand were joining the railing, like some bizarre basketry. Gerry had never come in contact with those fingers. Michael had always been very careful not to come too close, to keep from touching.

“What, that old dump? You have worse taste than I thought.” 

Michael had been to his flat back home more than a few times, hanging around and making conversation. Their conversations never seemed to lead anywhere, but Gerry couldn’t seem to make himself try to get Michael to stop, to leave him be. Besides, if Michael was hanging around him, then it wasn’t making trouble elsewhere. At least, that was what he planned on telling anyone who caught on.

He watched as Michael got itself thoroughly tangled in the bars of the railing. It then slumped to the ground, legs sprawled in front of itself, Michael’s arms held up over its head. Michael’s fingers were so wrapped up now that it was impossible to see which fingers belonged to which hand.

Michael smiled up at him. Some of its long curls fell into its face, and it pursed its lips, attempting to blow them away from its eyes. Michael’s face wasn’t always clear, like changing the stations on an old television set, sometimes there was more static than facial features. But when he was tuned in, Gerry could tell that Michael was beautiful. The face that was framed by long, blond curls was round and open, with wide, hopeful eyes, a button nose, and a smile that seemed almost shy in comparison to the rest of Michael. The eyes themselves could never decide on a color, and if Gerry looked too closely, he thought he might fall through them and into a corridor.

Before he could think of why it might be a bad idea, Gerry reached out and tucked Michael’s hair behind its ear. The curls felt soft, but with an underlying edge, like what might happen if you used too much hair gel.

“Do you know _why_ I keep coming to see you?” Michael said, shifting in place. 

“No.” Gerry shrugged. “Are you going to tell me?”

Michael laughed again, trailing off into a sigh that sounded almost fond. Its curls bounced back into its eyes, and Gerry was struck with the desire to gather them up into a hair tie.

Feeling confident enough to reach out again, he used both hands to push the curls back into place, and Michael looked up at him with sparkling, swirling eyes.

“You _can_ touch me,” Michael suggested. Its sibilant voice echoed in Gerry’s ears, but he found that the reverberation wasn’t necessarily unpleasant.

“Oh, I…” Gerry considered this for a moment. “Is that why you’ve tied yourself into knots? For me?”

The air around them suddenly tasted like strawberries and aquamarine, and Gerry wasn't sure how he was tasting a color, but he was. 

"It would be an ordeal for me to release myself quickly," Michael said meaningfully.

"You'd hurt yourself?"

Michael blinked at him, then nodded slowly. "I don’t like to have my movements hindered, you see. But, I--I would like to be touched, I think. If you are amenable.”

Gerry lowered himself to the floor of the balcony, sitting back on his knees. "So, you don’t trust itself not to lash out otherwise?"

Michael shook its head wildly. "I can control myself, well, as far as I have one. A self, I mean. But these hands aren't meant for touching. I’m not meant to have hands at all, or a body. But now I've got one, and I remember touch, or at least, I think I do. Before I became it-is-not-what-it-is. I think--I think touching did not involve blood, or pain."

"Well, yeah. I'm all for avoiding that." Gerry grinned. He took a simple black hair tie from around his wrist and began to gather up Michael's curls. He might as well. As he fixed them into a loose ponytail, it wasn't hard to notice how close he was to Michael's lips. It was easy enough to lean the few inches forward and press them together.

"Your lips don't feel any different to mine," Gerry said as he sat back again.

"Some things are easier to twist into the expected. I don't know why I have such trouble with my hands. My eyes, too. And...and other things."

"Like what?"

"Oh!" Michael laughed, and the sound was like glass breaking against a sea of gelatin. "That is far more than you'll want to see, I think."

"How do you know what I want to see?" Gerry asked, and he let his hand rest against Michael's thigh. It was a lovely thigh, if you could ignore the shifting inkblot pattern on the trousers it was wearing. Gerry was decent enough at dealing with the unexpected, at feeling comfortable with things that might have given other people a headache.

"You know what they say about flirting with monsters."

"No, what do they say?" Gerry asked. He pressed a kiss to Michael's cheek. It felt heavy, and then lighter, like Michael was a piece of sandpaper that was trying very hard to think marshmallow thoughts.

"What do they say, indeed," Michael answered nonsensically. 

Gerry was nearly certain that Michael was blushing, if not for the fact that it seemed to be blushing confetti.

"You came to me," Gerry said, deciding that he was going to lay out the truth, even if Michael was incapable of it. "You made yourself as harmless as you could think of. You asked for something, not knowing if you would get it."

"Careful. I'm not harmless."

"No, you're not." Gerry kissed him again, this time slow, and he could feel the tension in Michael beneath him, twisting this way and that, struggling to keep his skin soft and vulnerable, trying so hard not to hurt him. The effort Michael was making, just to be close, made Gerry's too soft heart thump faster in his chest. Michael tasted, in turns, like lilac, blueberry, motor oil, newspaper ink, salt, the inherent eroticism of the sea, chalk, limes, and clover. The ever-changing sensations kept him guessing, made him kiss deeper, push his tongue in and press it against Michael's. 

The angle was awkward, sitting up on his knees and leaning forward to get their mouths together, and Gerry found himself moving to straddle Michael’s lap, cupping its face with his hands as they kissed.

“Is this what you wanted from me?” Gerry asked, as they broke apart.

Michael’s eyes glitched out of existence for a moment, and then it shook its head, as if struggling to regain its form. 

“Want is a difficult word, isn’t it?” Michael said. Hardly any of his questions ever seemed to be something it expected an answer to. “But I am not--I am not _unhappy_ with the current happenings.”

“Well, you know, I aim to please.” Gerry reached out with the intention of touching Michael’s lips, but his fingers slipped as if through sand.

“I--I am _sorry_ ,” Michael was quick to say, averting its gaze. “I wasn’t concentrating, only, give me a moment.”

Gerry tried to hold back the urge to comfort Michael as he watched it wince and twist its face into solidity once again. Michael then gave him a lopsided sort of smile, and Gerry found himself running his hands down its chest, and moving forward for another kiss.

“Do you want to free your hands?” Gerry asked. If Michael was willing to go through all this trouble, then Gerry could trust it not to stab him in the heat of the moment.

Michael shook its head, its eyes shifting from one side of its face to the other for a brief moment. “I might try to hold onto you, and then where would we be?”

“Yeah...guess so.” Gerry frowned. Michael felt solid beneath him. This might have been the closest he’d been to another...someone...in quite some time. Gerry didn’t exactly date.

“When I untwist, it will be because you told me to go,” Michael said softly. Its handsome features came into sharp focus, and it blinked at him with dewy eyes.

“I should tell you to go.” Gerry leaned in and kissed the edge of Michael’s ear. He shouldn’t be playing at romance with the Spiral. He kissed down Michael’s neck, which felt almost like the last time he had done this, with a human.

Michael fidgeted beneath him, making small sounds, staticky whimpers.

“I’m still a liar, you know,” Michael said, as Gerry moved to kiss his eyelids gently. “It’s in my nature.”

“What are you lying about now, then?”

Michael kissed him back fervently when Gerry pressed their lips together once again. He found that he was rubbing up against Michael’s thigh, and the friction was doing things to him through his own worn jeans.

Michael didn’t answer the question, which was typical, but Gerry couldn’t bring himself to care.

“What--what did you want out of this?” Gerry asked, forcing himself to stay still. “Because I’ll ride your thigh until I come if you let me.”

There was a harsh, squeaking sound, and it took Gerry a moment to realize that Michael was straining against the bars of the railing.

“What do I want?” Michael asked, almost breathless.

“A real answer,” Gerry said, suddenly. “One real answer, or we stop.”

“I--,” Michael paused, shaking its head. “That’s not something I’m used to doing. Don’t--don’t stop, though. I would very much like to be the cause of something good for you.”

It was a good enough response for Gerry, who hasn’t had a sexual partner in longer than he can remember. It wasn’t safe, trying to find romance in his line of work. He straddled Michael’s thigh confidently, letting himself feel the friction between them, kissing Michael on the mouth again. His arms went around Michael’s neck as he hung on. They were kissing desperate and deep, and the bliss of touching and being touched pushed Gerry over the edge sooner than he would have thought. He gasped in shock as his orgasm rushed through him, gasped against Michael’s lips and held on tightly.

After a few moments of breathing hard, Gerry slipped away, sitting back on the floor of the balcony and looking up towards Michael’s face.

“I must admit, I’m rather pleased with myself right now,” Michael said in the silence that followed.

“Well, I’m rather pleased with you as well.” Gerry grinned. He shouldn’t be letting his guard down. He shouldn’t have done all of this in the first place. But that was a problem for future Gerry.

Michael smiled back at him, brightly, until its face broke out in neon polka dots.

“What’s that mean?” Gerry asked.

“Oh, it doesn’t mean anything, does it?” Michael shrugged as the polka dots spread to its limbs. “I’m not used to being observed for this long, so I suppose--well. Perhaps, it’s that.”

“Will you let me help you untangle yourself?” Gerry asked, rising to his feet. He wasn’t sure if Michael could feel pain, exactly, but it didn’t look comfortable.

“Kicking me out already?”

Gerry began to gently nudge Michael’s fingers through the gaps, and Michael made another staticky whimpering sound.

“You don’t have to do that. I’m more than capable,” it murmured. 

“How many is that?” Gerry asked, carefully unwinding its digits. The edges were sharp, and hummed with a nervous energy, but for some reason he was utterly certain that his own skin would remain intact.

“How many of what?” Michael sounded caught off guard.

“Lies.”

Michael’s laughter reached down into the alley below, where no one could see how it leaned into Gerry’s touch, how it allowed Gerry to take its hands in his, where no one could see how it let itself be handled with care.

**Author's Note:**

> GerryMichael makes me soft ok


End file.
